The present invention relates to electronic commerce and more particularly to systems and methods for using a network for electronic commerce.
The Internet is a new means by which consumers can access and purchase information, communicate and pay for services, and acquire and pay for goods. Because of the anonymous nature of communication networks, new methods and systems must be developed to substitute for existing procedures used in face-to-face or mail order/telephone order transactions. These methods and systems should provide confidential transmission, authentication of parties involved, and assurance of the integrity of payment instructions for goods and services.
To achieve these objectives and others, the Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) Specification has been developed. The SET protocol allows customers to make payment card transactions securely over the Internet. However, transactions made using this protocol generally involve an initial cardholder registration process that requires account data to be entered manually (e.g., via a keyboard at the cardholder's personal computer (PC)). The SET protocol supports several levels of security, some of which are only accessible if cardholder-related data is stored on the cardholder access device, generally limiting the availability of such security to the cardholder's own PC. The use of SET does not allow the issuer to authenticate that a card was present or that the cardholder was genuine when authorizing payment transactions.
What is needed is a system that enhances transaction security over the Internet by verifying presence of a card while providing freedom to the user to initiate transactions from multiple card access devices.